A Cleaning Epiphany

I know that some of you are wondering why in the heck I'm blogging about cleaning. Isn't this supposed to be a blog about my crazy family. The problem is that some days my life is so full of glamour and sizzle that I choose not to blog about those days, because I don't want to look like I"m bragging. Like today for instance; Adlerson and I froze our tails off in the snow yesterday getting our tank heaters hooked up so the petting zoo that lives at our house stays hydrated. Of course, as soon as we finished, the sun came out. Then today, as I'm hauling the extremely full because we forgot last week garbage can to the curb(read 1/4 mile), I realized I had 3 very angry goats. Of course, their water tank was froze solid, so I had to leave Adlerson inside to "babysit" as I was quickly trying to solve the problem and fight with 300 feet of extension cord. After some creative cord restructuring, and a quick test with a leg lamp night light, we have power to the tank heater, and three happy goats. Of course we couldn't accomplish this before I climbed off the fence and rolled my ankle into a hole that filled the air with the music of a popping ankle and extreme profanity. So, see people would become overly jealous at my glamorous and swanky daily life, so I thought I"d post about my cleaning epiphany.

I hate to clean; almost as much as I hate to cook. I love a clean house. I really, really love clean houses. Dirty houses make me grumpy. Our personal "Alice" has forgotten to show up to work for the past 12 years, so sadly that leaves the process of creating a clean house up to me. I've come up with a few handy hints to make this a slightly less disdainfull process.

1. I make my children clean up their own mess. When my kids turn their bathroom into a truckstop worthy disaster, I give them cleaning supplies and make them fix it. Sure, they don't always do the best job, but at least its not near as gross when I go and do it a few days later.

2. If you have solid floors, get a Swiffer. Oh my gosh, that is like God's invention to heal all the dirty woes. As a bonus, convince your kids that its a fun thing to "play" with and make them take turns to Swiffer.

3. And my great cleaning epiphany: Pick the worse task at hand and do that for the day. I hate long cleaning sessions. The only thing that makes them tolerable is the Blue Moon that I crack while I"m cleaning. I've discovered that if I pick the worse task at hand, and do just that task in a quick burst every day, I can keep the house looking pretty decent, and I don't hate it near as bad. So one day I might sweep/mop, then the next I might dust, and then do the bathrooms, or the kitchen. And then 15 minutes or so later, I'm done and I can force myself to focus on even the most horrible task for 15 minutes.

So, there you have it. No need to thank me :)